“Do you mean that you think that that young man is capable of saying unseemly things to me? Do you suppose that I would listen to them?”
“No. Monsieur Edmond seems an honorable man; he has no evil intentions, I believe; but love is a sentiment that one cannot control. If you should love this young man——”
“Well, where would be the harm, since you think that he loves me? He would be my husband.”
“Your husband! My poor girl, before marrying, you must have at least enough to live on. You have nothing, and I fancy that Monsieur Edmond hasn’t very much, either!”
“But he is always very well and fashionably dressed; he hired Monsieur Durand’s house for a thousand francs.”
“That proves that he knows how to spend money, but not that he knows how to earn it.—Come, come, don’t you take your turn at making wry faces at me. I am your second mother; I am thinking of your future, of your welfare; you ought not to be angry with me for that.”
Agathe replied by throwing herself into Honorine’s arms, saying:
“Never fear! I shall not have any secrets from you.”
The two friends had hardly finished their conversation when Poucette’s voice attracted their attention. The girl was talking to someone, in what seemed to be a threatening tone. Her voice came from the garden; the two ladies were there in a moment, and found Poucette clinging to the leg of a small boy who had climbed into a cherry tree, and continued to eat the cherries although she jerked at his leg, trying to pull him down. But when Honorine and Agathe appeared, little Emile concluded to come down from the tree.
“D’ye see, madame,” cried Poucette, “here’s the one that steals our cherries; for some time past I’ve been noticing that the cherries kept disappearing although you ladies don’t pick any; so I began to suspect something; I hid and watched, and I saw this good-for-nothing scamp, the lost child, climbing over the wall right here by the cherry tree, and in a minute he was in the tree.”